Buzz Aldrin talks Mars with O.C. kids

YORBA LINDA – The second man to walk on the moon strode into the Nixon library on Tuesday evening, and the room full of schoolchildren was ready.

Buzz Aldrin, 83, was there to deliver a talk on his latest book, "Mission to Mars," outlining his ideas on how to put humans on the red planet. Nearly 800 people attended the event.

But first, he faced a battery of questions from about 35 Orange County youngsters, most of them in elementary or middle school.

The students had been selected by their teachers based on questions they submitted for Aldrin, who followed Neil Armstrong onto the lunar surface July 20, 1969, in one of the space program's most iconic moments.

The first question came from David Ponsen, 11, of Malcom Elementary school in Laguna Niguel.

"What inspired you to be an astronaut?" he asked.

Aldrin recounted his experience at West Point and his time as a fighter pilot in the Korean War, a flier during the Cold War and eventually his entry into the space program.

"You don't always go the straight, direct way," he said. "Sometimes, you kind of cut around the end."

He told the group he didn't favor a repeat of the moon-landing program.

"We really don't need to go back to the moon with our astronauts now, and maybe compete with the Chinese," he said. "That's a no-win situation."

Instead, he advocates practicing building bases – first in Hawaii, then on the moon, then on the surface of Mars.

An organizer asked the children if they wanted to go to Mars, and one of them asked Aldrin if, as a child, he ever thought he would go to the moon.

"That was pure fantasy," he said. "But it's not fantasy when he asked if you wanted to go to Mars anymore, is it? No, because we're thinking ahead. We're planning to be able to do things like that. And I hope we do, instead of repeating what we did 40 years ago, and sending astronauts back to the moon again."

One boy asked how Aldrin was chosen to go the moon.

"The best answer for that is being in the right place at the right time," Aldrin said. "And then when I wasn't, I kind of manipulated things."

But the questioner who seemed to steal the show was Catherine Le, 11, a fifth-grader from Palmyra Elementary in Orange.

"Do you personally believe that there are extraterrestrials existing on other planets or on this Earth?"

Aldrin didn't hesitate.

"I believe what there is good evidence to support," he said. "And so far, there isn't good evidence (of) anything other than what we normally see around us that's living, like human beings."

But he acknowledged that in the broader cosmos, it might be a different story.

"With all the billions of galaxies, and the billions of stars in the galaxy, the chances are that there are places like the Earth," he said. "The chances are quite good. They might not look like us at all."

Catherine wasn't finished.

"Do you personally believe that a woman will some day walk on the moon or Mars?"

"Of course," Aldrin said. "Do you want to be that person?"

"I'm not so sure," she answered.

"That's quite all right," he said. "You're allowed to hesitate."

Once the questioning was over, Aldrin and the organizers revealed that they'd cooked up a bit of a surprise for the children.

In 1999, the 30th anniversary of his moon landing, Aldrin had put on a pair of boots like the ones he wore on the moon and walked across a strip of wet concrete.

The footprints are still there, alongside a plaque to mark the occasion.

The children were led upstairs and outside into a courtyard, where, in the last rays of the sun, Aldrin re-enacted his walk; then the children lined up single-file behind him, following in his footsteps.

"I want you to know that Michael Jackson always did it backwards," Aldrin told the gathering.